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I couldn't be more underwhelmed by their conference. I was hoping to hear of some new exclusives or something, even vague, about the 720. Instead what you get is more Kinect crap and media-focused announcements.

It was unbelievable, sooo many new games and apps are coming out on Wii U! *sarcasm*
Let me cover the entire presentation for you..

-Two Wii Pads at the same time! (until the battery runs out)
-Batman: Arkham City (...wait a minute... I played that game)
-Mass Effect 3 (huh, sounds familiar?)
-Wii Fit U (hurry grab your plastic scale out of the garbage!)
-Netflix, HULU, and Amazon Video (oh yea i already have that )
-NEW NEW SUPER NEW MARIO BROS Wii U (have I seen this before?)

Funny, I was just looking at screens for the Mario U. It's lost its panache. Full 3D rendered models with generic shiny textures (for clothing and skin) with pre-baked backgrounds. I think of Super Mario World, and I'm awestruck. No wonder Nintendo doesn't care about graphics. They don't know what to do with them now.

Funny, I was just looking at screens for the Mario U. It's lost its panache. Full 3D rendered models with generic shiny textures (for clothing and skin) with pre-baked backgrounds. I think of Super Mario World, and I'm awestruck. No wonder Nintendo doesn't care about graphics. They don't know what to do with them now.

You should have seen some of the demos of the "new" 3DS games...at first i thought they were from Game Boy Color...

Funny, I was just looking at screens for the Mario U. It's lost its panache. Full 3D rendered models with generic shiny textures (for clothing and skin) with pre-baked backgrounds. I think of Super Mario World, and I'm awestruck. No wonder Nintendo doesn't care about graphics. They don't know what to do with them now.

Honestly (and perhaps predictably), I sort of had an opposite reaction.

While I noted that it all looked way too familiar, I was thinking, "A Mario game has never looked prettier." It wasn't amazing, but it was Mario in HD, and that's all I would expect. As for the other titles, particularly a new Metroid, I would expect a lot more graphically.

Honestly (and perhaps predictably), I sort of had an opposite reaction.

Of course.

Originally Posted by Jawbone54

While I noted that it all looked way too familiar, I was thinking, "A Mario game has never looked prettier." It wasn't amazing, but it was Mario in HD, and that's all I would expect. As for the other titles, particularly a new Metroid, I would expect a lot more graphically.

At the sizes I was looking at, it was indistinguishable from a Wii game. C'mon!

Dwelling on it, there's just so much bad going on here. The player models lack any texture or depth, the ground is a different style or texture than the "brick" which looks flat, and the background is just a boring matte painting of sorts. The icons at the top get thick black lines that contrast with the style of the models, which contrast the foreground which contrast the bg. The biggest issue, I finally realized, is the lighting is ultra pre-baked. And in the least creative way possible. The dirt and the brick don't even match, but the brick tower's lighting is coming from the user, always getting dark at the edges, unrealistically. The lighting on the character models is coming from the right. The bg light is coming from the left. That. is. awful.

Second example:

The entire character mode looks like its plastic. It's charmless. They can't bristle up Mario's mustache? Give the cloth some texture? Differentiate it from the boot? Yoshie can't get subtle scales?

Still, I saw some more screens. This is more stylish, though it still suffers from the piecemeal look.

Yes, the lighting is atrocious, the models are plasticky, and some of Nintendo's developers apparently haven't just lacked technology, but also suck at making pretty games. HOWEVER...I will say that there is still a Nintendo "charm," whatever that is, when you see it in motion. I'll reserve final judgment until the WiiU actually comes out.

I can't promise that I won't buy one, primarily because my son is going to be entering into early gaming age during its lifespan. Also, I buy everything.

I already own Infamous 2 and LittleBigPlanet 2, but since I'll be able to download them for free, I'll take advantage of Best Buy's current 100% trade-in special this week and put the credit towards something else.

That "but" is what propelled Wii, with all its many, terrible flaws to almost 100 million sales.

Sounds like Nintendo still knows gameplay. I didn't say otherwise. I think the screens speak for themselves.

I won't deny that it's underwhelming, but we all knew it would be.

****er probably can't walk but you're already using him as an excuse to buy it. For shame.

...

I swear I don't have much of an interest in it for myself. I thought I'd try out the Wii (twice), but both times I realized that their games just didn't have the same appeal to me anymore. That's not to say that I won't pick up the next Zelda if "my son has" a WiiU.

Q: One of the things that Steam does is this random deep-discounting of software, and it works well for them. Do you see that as something you want to do?

David DeMartini: We won't be doing that. Obviously they think it's the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we're not trying to be Target. We're trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean good value - we're trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, just don't look for 75 percent off going-out-of-business sales.

While I think there's a grain of truth here, if you take it all in, used games cheapen intellectual property, sales cheapen intellectual property, waiting to buy cheapens intellectual property... I guess unless you're pre-ordering at full price you're just an IP murderer.

Also, LOL at comparing themselves to Nordstrom. So you're just superficially overpriced?

Q: Isn't that in some sense an old-school way of looking at it based on cost of goods? When your cost of goods is basically your transaction costs and your server costs. Even when they discount a game by 75 percent, they're still making money on it. It's not the margin that's important, but the total amount of revenue that's coming in. If by discounting it that much on a weekend they then kill the sales going forward, or they kill the sales in retail stores for the packaged versions, that could be a concern. But Gabe has said that as far as they can tell when they've done that it hasn't affected sales in other channels.

David DeMartini: Actually, Gabe will usually say it improves sales in other channels because if the game is good there are some water-cooler moments and it has a spring-up effect. Without revealing too much, what I'll say is one way to deal with aging inventory is you do deep discounts like that. There are other ways, which I can't really talk about, of dealing with product as it ages over a period of time, where you present a value to the customer and you engage them in your service on a going-forward basis. We don't believe in the drop-it-down, spring-it-up, 75 percent off approach, but we've got something else that we do believe in that we'll be rolling out.

But I absolutely understand your point, and I'm not not-hearing what you're saying. We don't have the old-school approach that you're describing; we're all about building as big a universe as we can, and there are multiple ways to build the universe. One way is to discount the price, the other is to form a longer-term relationship with them and draw them in that way.

There are "other ways", but for some reason he can't talk about them. Shucks!

Q: I do think the downside of what Steam does might be damage to the brand.

David DeMartini: Also what Steam does might be teaching the customer that "I might not want it in the first month, but if I look at it in four or five months, I'll get one of those weekend sales and I'll buy it at that time at 75 percent off." It's an approach, and I'm not going to say it's not working for Valve. It certainly works for Valve; I don't know if it works as well for the publishing partners who take on the majority of that haircut.

So, Steam replicates the retail experience? Oh the horror!

Also, Steam can't run a sale without the publisher's approval. What's really happening here is you guys know the future is digital, so now you're trying change the game before everyone realize it can work exactly the same.

Sony's much-anticipated The Last Guardian was not shown during Sony's E3 press conference earlier this week due to "technical difficulties," Sony Worldwide president Shuhei Yoshida has said.

Talking to Eurogamer, Yoshida explained, "The team is back in Tokyo working hard, and there are some technical difficulties that the team is focused on right now. That's why we don't have an update."

When asked whether the game will definitely be released at some point for PlayStation 3, he responded, "When we have confidence in saying that, we will talk about it. But today, we are working through some engineering effort."

I'd surmise the technical difficulties are porting it to the PS4, but then he said it's definitely coming to the PS3.

There are other ways, which I can't really talk about, of dealing with product as it ages over a period of time, where you present a value to the customer and you engage them in your service on a going-forward basis.

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

There are "other ways", but for some reason he can't talk about them. Shucks!

I think he means DLC. He just doesn't want to say out loud that DLC helps them keep the sale price of the original product propped up. A product that still has upcoming DLC will be assessed as higher value in customers' eyes, which an "abandoned" product will be valued lower.

I think he means DLC. He just doesn't want to say out loud that DLC helps them keep the sale price of the original product propped up. A product that still has upcoming DLC will be assessed as higher value in customers' eyes, which an "abandoned" product will be valued lower.

I could see that. However, they seem to be in favor of keeping the prices high, so someone jumping late will end up paying in excess of the original price of the game.

Someone on NeoGAF made an interesting supposition. Basically, right now EA sells $60 "high quality" titles. Most people can't or won't buy more than a few a year. Let's say three, for a total of $180. Now let's say in an alternate universe games sell for $20. EA now has to successfully develop and market 9 titles to match what they were making selling Madden, Battlefield, and Need for Speed once a year.

So basically what this boils down to is, competition is bad, because it creates a buyers market.

Sony has indicated its priority with PlayStation 4 is to have it be the "best" next generation console - not the cheapest or out before Microsoft's next Xbox.

Speaking on Gametrailers, Sony Computer Entertainment US boss Jack Tretton said the Japanese company would prefer to build a better machine and have it launch after its rivals than rush it out.

"We've never been first. We've never been cheapest. It's about being the best," he said. "If you can build a better machine and it's going to come out a little bit later, that's better than rushing something to market that's going to run out of gas for the long term.

Sony: "Learn from our mistakes? What mistakes?"

---

Today in, the mainstream media doesn't get video games:

Will Nintendo's forthcoming Wii U controller breathe new life into its aging Wii console?

Yes, the lighting is atrocious, the models are plasticky, and some of Nintendo's developers apparently haven't just lacked technology, but also suck at making pretty games. HOWEVER...I will say that there is still a Nintendo "charm," whatever that is, when you see it in motion. I'll reserve final judgment until the WiiU actually comes out.

I can't promise that I won't buy one, primarily because my son is going to be entering into early gaming age during its lifespan. Also, I buy everything.

I don't know guys, I think the whole concept of 2D side scroller Mario games is to capture that sort of retro gaming feel. I expect stuff to be vibrant and colorful, but not realistic.

What did you think of the Zelda tech demo? Do you think that the games that are going after realism will approach this sort of detail?